Fair Play

After 20 Years, Some Small Strides, But Hurdles Remain

When Jaymie Hyde arrived at the University of New Hampshire four years ago, she looked past the cracked public tennis courts, the 15-year-old uniforms that didn't fit, and the lack of scholarships. She was just happy to play tennis.

Then, last July, New Hampshire took that away, too.

After the shock of the program's elimination wore off, Hyde did something about it. Like so many young female athletes, Hyde, 21, of Essex, had never heard of Title IX of the Equal Education Amendment Act, the law that gave women equal opportunity in all scholastic pursuits, including sports, at schools that receive federal funds.

Led by Hyde and her mother, the 11 women's tennis team members hired Washington attorney Arthur Bryant and threatened to sue the Durham university. After all, the school's budget cuts didn't affect the men's tennis team.

The university capitulated. The two parties reached an out-of-court settlement March 12. New Hampshire reinstated the team and agreed to implement a five-year plan to upgrade its women's athletic program.

"I hope from this whole thing that everybody else realizes that you don't have to sit around and let it happen," Hyde said. "We didn't know about Title IX, which is kind of funny. I sort of felt stupid."

Title IX marks its 20th anniversary next month. With regard to sports, the law insists that the ratio of male and female athletes be proportional to that of the student body.

Though some progress has been made, women in college athletics are still struggling for equality nationally and in Connecticut. And with many colleges now hard-pressed economically, women's programs seem unlikely to expand in the '90s.

"In the '70s and '80s, women's athletics expanded and left us with extravagant expectations," said Judith A. Davidson, athletic director at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. "Now we're in retrenchment."

And yet, women are curiously quiet. Although men outnumber women in collegiate athletics by about 2-to-1 in Connecticut, the federal agency responsible for enforcing Title IX has received no complaints about the state's schools in the last two years. Nationally, in two years, the agency has received only 20 college complaints.

Many in college athletics do not understand their rights. And many are not as willing as Jaymie Hyde to fight for them. Some fear reprisals from those in charge.

Nationally, women collegiate athletes are also outnumbered 2-to-1. Some say that is not because of a lack of opportunity, but a lack of interest.

"I think every male and female athlete on campus should have the same opportunities," said Carolyn Vanacore, a former physical education department chairwoman and professor emeritus at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. "But there do not appear to be as many women interested in sports as men."

"For years, athletic departments have contended that women just don't want to play sports in the numbers that men do," said Lyn St. James, the president of the New York-based Women's Sports Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and enhancing sports for girls and women.

"They say, because of football, there will be more men playing sports than women. Perhaps there may always be a few more male athletes than females, but the kind of disparity that we now see -- a 70-30 ratio in Division I schools -- is due to a denial of opportunities rather than a lack of interest."

What happened at Washington State University supports the point. After the school was found in violation of Title IX, it added women's soccer and crew teams. As a result, the percentage of women athletes increased from 29 to 44.

"If the opportunities are there," St. James says, "women will play."

In compliance or not? Title IX is so complex and unwieldy -- there are 14 major criteria to judge whether a school is in compliance -- that it took 16 years of debate and lawsuits to define the law so it could be enforced. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is responsible for enforcing Title IX, and there is sharp disagreement over whether it has done its job.

"We had a chance to move into a period of permanent equity," said Jeff Orleans, who helped write Title IX as a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. General Counsel's Office. "But there was no federal leadership for the colleges. It was disappointing that there wasn't [OCR] enforcement."

Most of Connecticut's colleges and universities say they think they are in compliance with the law, but no one is sure.